


Silent as the Graves that Haunt this Mountain

by Drag0nst0rm



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Infidelity, The Myths are Real and the Minister of War Very Much Wishes They Weren't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27699578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: Ten things the Minster of War won't tell you.(Or: the royal family is not quite a soap opera, but it's not for lack of trying on some of the members' parts. Hector really wishes they would stop.)
Relationships: Eugenides & Minister of War (Queen's Thief), Minister of War/Eugenides' Mother | Queen Thief
Comments: 13
Kudos: 88





	Silent as the Graves that Haunt this Mountain

1\. He is supposed to marry Hecuba. It is not an arranged marriage, nothing like that, but she is a good match, politically speaking, and they are cousins so distant that it doesn’t really count at all, and she is pretty and charming and young.

He is supposed to marry Hecuba, and she certainly doesn’t seem overly opposed to the idea, but he doesn’t miss the way her tongue lingers over the prince before she gets to his name.

He is far too busy watching the Queen Thief to care.

He doesn’t think she is too disappointed when she ends up with his brother. His brother certainly isn’t, at least not to start.

(He will tell you that, actually, if he decides you have a right to know. What he won’t tell you is that in the uproar that results when he proposes, someone points out the unthinkable possibility of someone in line to be queen being the Thief.)

(His father-in-law says that his daughter will never be the Thief, and Hector wonders at that because women have been Thieves before, and it is not as if Andromache lacks the talent or inclination, but it helps his argument, so, for once, he does not argue with his beloved’s father.)

(Later, when the world his son walks in has become a little more solid around him, he will think back to that moment, and to the heart stopping moment she had fallen off the roof and not been caught, and he will go cold and long for the days when it was not too late to convince his youngest son to take up a safe career path, such as becoming a solider.)

2\. Seducing other people’s lovers is a wintertime sport in Eddis, but it is not one he plays. He doesn’t sleep with Hecuba. Not before his marriage and certainly not after it. He values his vows too highly, values Andromache too highly, for that, even if he had been tempted, and he is not. Not by Hecuba, for herself; not by his brother’s wife, no matter who she is; not the king’s wife, as he values his head.

Not anyone, as he values preventing whatever vengeance his Queen Thief or her father would wreak, if the following reasons are not good enough for someone.

(He does tell people this. Repeatedly. Loudly. Occasionally at sword point, and it is all, every word, true.)

(What he never tells his children is that he is not sure that their mother believed him.)

(Which is only fair because he is not sure that he believes her when she tells him that the rumors lie when they claim that she got her revenge.)

4\. The nephew born in the same year as Gen dies before winter’s end. The gossips have the good taste to stop speculating on his parentage at that point, but they do not have the good taste to stop speculating about the rest of the children.

He is certain, absolutely certain, that Helen is not his because he is absolutely certain that he never slept with Hecuba. 

(He stops telling people this after Helen is crowned. It is not that the truth is changed, or that he cares less about it.)

(It is that the barons find it easier to believe that he will not raise his sword against Helen if they think she is his daughter.)

5\. Gen nearly dies of the same fever his nephew does. Actually, Gen catches the fever first; he recovers from it on the same night his nephew is struck.

“Of course he didn’t die,” the boy’s grandfather says dismissively. “He’s the next Thief.”

Hector already knows enough to say, _No._

He does not know enough to know that this will not change anything.

(This is common knowledge. People certainly hear him and Andromache shouting about it often enough.)

(What is not common knowledge is that in the midnight hours as he holds his son and prays, when he fears so desperately that the fever will not break, is the moment that he decides that he is absolutely certain that Eugenides is his son.)

6\. He is absolutely certain that Helen is not his, but he is not absolutely certain she’s his brother’s.

He is absolutely certain that his brother had three sons that Hecuba is not responsible for.

(He never tells anyone any of this, but the gossips certainly guess.)

(What they do not notice, as he does, is that within a year of Helen receiving the Gift, the others are all dead.)

(Mostly in falls, but also by fever.)

7\. Hector believes, wholeheartedly, even though he has not seen.

He believes, and he sacrifices faithfully for every member of his family he has left.

(He believes, and it is not until he nearly loses his son to the Queen of Attolia that he has any comparison for how much he hates.)

8\. He loves all his children fiercely, and Eugenides is no different in that respect.

But he holds onto Eugenides more tightly because Eugenides is the one he has almost lost, again and again and again.

To his doubts at his birth, to the old thief throwing him out the window, to the fever, to his grandfather’s training, to his grandfather’s ideas, to the council’s idiocy, to Attolia’s cruelty, to Attolia’s charms, to assassins, to the Medes, to Eddis’s superstitions, to his own two hands.

He never fears for Stenides’ life, not once, not until his son goes up in smoke.

(He holds his son’s throat between his hands and squeezes, he beats him within an inch of his life, and he hates every moment but he will do it again, do worse, if it means sparing his son from something even more terrible.)

(That is the second reason he hates Attolia: before her, he was the one standing between his son and danger, not the one inflicting it.)

9\. He spends more time in the library once Gen is gone. He looks at the records there sometimes. Particularly at the deaths.

Eddis has a history of very clever rulers and very clever Thieves. They couldn’t have afforded anything less.

Eddis also has a history of losing her heirs before they can come to the throne. Second sons, third sons, fourth sons - in one queen’s case, _seventh daughters_ \- it is not so unreasonable that when he wed, people questioned what would happen if he came to the throne.

Things happen, he knows, knows all too well. Eddis is not unique in that. If it was, a fool of a king would reign in Attolia, and Irene would have been a mere princess, who would have moved here upon marrying his son.

But he notices that everyone between his country’s brilliant kings - and queens - and their thrones has died, and everyone after them has lived, even the sickliest, earliest, smallest child, like a kind of apology.

None of Helen’s brothers could live if she was to take the throne, not even the unacknowledged ones, but he thinks that if she had been given younger sisters, they would be living still, no matter how many fevers they caught.

He is fiercely glad, suddenly, that gods do not listen to rumors.

(Or perhaps he is glad, for the very first time, that his son has become the Thief.)

10\. He wonders sometimes what would have happened if his brother had lived longer, if his nephews had survived.

He doesn’t mention it, of course. To say it would to cast doubt upon his niece. But he wonders.

(When he falls in battle, he opens his eyes to a library, where he stands before a woman who looks a little like his mother once did.)

(And he thinks of the long line of the dead in Eddis, knocked down like pins in a children’s game so that every game piece would be perfectly lined up for Eddis to survive.)

(And he thinks of the horror and the guilt and the agony of wrapping his own hands around his son’s throat but doing it anyway because every other option was worse.)

(He does not say this to the woman who is not his mother because he remembers what his son said once when he was wrapped in delirium.)

(Just dust motes, he said. Just dust. And who notices a dust mote when they sweep it from the air?)

(Then he sees the ancient grief in the woman’s eyes, and he thinks, just this once, just perhaps, his son might have misunderstood.)

(He thinks it is probably a good thing that he will have eternity to think on how he feels about that.)


End file.
